Privatization key to saving socialism???

Cuba’s leaders are counting on Alberto Romero’s eight cows to help turn around the island’s struggling socialist economy. Private farmers like Romero, who belongs to a 219-member cooperative near the eastern city of Holguin, were overshadowed for years by Cuba’s emphasis on large state farms. But the government recently began handing out idle state land to private farmers across the island in an effort to boost food production. “The government has put its faith in us, and we will show what we are capable of,” said Romero, whose 20-acre plot has been in his family for 103 years.

Cuba is hoping that private farmers can literally plow the island out of a huge $11 billion trade deficit this year caused by rising food import costs and falling exports. The policy marks a major shift away from inefficient state farms that once occupied the lion’s share of the island’s agricultural land.